One day last week, I was up late playing videos games. Not that unusual, but I noticed that my furnace was still running. It was late enough that it should have cycled down for the night and I went over to check it out. The display on the programmable thermostat was dim and I could just barely see that the battery indicator was blinking. The batteries were dead enough that it wasn’t keeping track anymore and the furnace would just run.
I swore, then proceeded to dismantle the thermostat to get at the batteries. The cover was a flimsy piece of plastic that I almost broke, but I finally got to them.
AA
Now, I don’t have a stockpile of batteries in my house and I had a total of zero AA batteries. I started scrounging around for some and realized that if I didn’t find any, I would either need to leave the furnace on all night (making it too hot) or off all night (way too cold in the morning).
I finally found a flashlight with the right size batteries and salvaged those. I put the thermostat back together and set about programming it again. Did a little more swearing and then got out the manual.
The configuration menu is activated by holding the back-light button for three seconds. I never would have found that without the manual. And would it have killed anyone to add a “setup” button? Why is the trend for electronic devices to reduce the number of buttons to stupid levels? I blame Apple for that.
Except for remote controls. I’ve got three remotes and each has at least 2 dozen buttons that I never use. Really?
The thermostat required pushing buttons or holding buttons in the correct sequence – with a timer that would clear what I was doing if I wasn’t fast enough. I finally got everything set up again and went to bed – knowing that I would have to replace the batteries again soon since they weren’t new.
So, the temp in my house is back to normal for now.
Hmmm… I wonder if I can transplant some buttons from my remote controls to the thermostat?